Christmas with the Shipyard Girls Read online

  When Mrs Crabtree’s ginger tom trotted past her and into the office, Martha stared at the cat in open-mouthed disbelief.

  ‘Sorry, John, I’m going to have to go. I’ve got Martha here …’

  Helen listened for a moment.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ll tell her, although I’m sure she won’t take a bit of notice.’

  She was quiet again.

  ‘Yes, of course, see you Saturday. Fingers crossed you don’t get an emergency … Great. See you then … Bye.’

  As soon as she’d hung up, Helen waved at Martha to enter.

  ‘Come in, come in!’

  Martha was still staring at the cat, which was now wrapping itself around Helen’s legs.

  ‘I know,’ Helen said, scowling down and pushing it away with her leg. ‘The damn thing’s been stalking me ever since the air raid, so I brought it to the yard. Thought it might make a good rat-catcher, but it seems to prefer to be indoors … Anyway, come in.’

  Martha followed her orders.

  ‘That was Dr Parker.’

  Martha’s face brightened up. She liked the doctor. He had a lovely way about him. Gloria had thought so too.

  ‘He says you shouldn’t really be back at work.’

  Martha touched her headscarf. She’d be glad when she didn’t have to wear it.

  Helen looked at her and remembered the last time Martha had been in this office. It must have been about a year ago, she recalled guiltily, when she’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to split up Rosie’s squad and force Martha to go and work with the riveters.

  ‘How are you feeling, anyway? I did come to the hospital to visit but Gloria told me you’d just been discharged.’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ Martha said, suddenly worried that Rosie might be sending her home.

  ‘Well, just take it easy, won’t you?’ Helen said. ‘And if you feel faint, head straight over to the first-aiders and they can get you across to the Royal in a jiffy.’

  ‘I will. But I won’t,’ Martha said, before asking, ‘Did you want me to help the riveters out?’ She was perplexed as to why she was there.

  ‘No, no.’ Helen shook her head. ‘Although any time you want to swap, you can do.’ She laughed. Everyone knew Martha was a natural riveter, but she would never be parted from her women welders.

  ‘I just wanted to say a proper thank you.’ Helen looked at Martha. ‘For saving my life. As well as Gloria’s and Hope’s.’

  Martha nervously touched her turban again.

  ‘If you hadn’t have come into that building with me, Gloria and Hope would be dead. I couldn’t have got them out of there on my own. And if you hadn’t yanked me back when we were in Mrs Crabtree’s lounge, I’d have been crushed under that beam. I certainly wouldn’t be sat here now.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to be brave,’ Martha said. ‘When I saw the beam going, I just grabbed you.’

  ‘And in doing so,’ Helen added, ‘you cracked your head open because you were holding on to me and not breaking your own fall.’

  ‘I probably would have bashed my head anyway. I can be really clumsy.’ Martha smiled.

  Helen looked at this giant of a woman sitting opposite her. She was such an anomaly. She’d never met anyone like her in her life.

  ‘Well, I owe you my life. As do Gloria and Hope. A mere thank you hardly seems to do that justice.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette.

  ‘I want you to know,’ Helen looked at Martha, deadly serious, ‘that if there is anything – anything at all – I can do for you at any time, now or in the future, just ask me.’

  Martha nodded.

  ‘Will you promise me?’ Helen said. ‘If you ever find yourself in need of money, or you need help in any way, you must come to me.’

  She paused.

  ‘I want you to promise.’

  ‘I promise,’ Martha said, feeling a little overwhelmed by Helen’s seriousness.

  Helen got up, walked round her desk and took Martha’s hand.

  ‘You’re a very courageous woman, you know?’

  Martha blushed. Something she rarely did.

  As Helen watched Martha leave the office and head back out to the yard, she felt the ginger tom brush against her legs.

  ‘Come here, Winston.’ She bent down, picked up the cat and gave it a stroke.

  She stood there for a moment, petting the cat and thinking about the night she had heard her mother threatening to expose the women’s secrets should Gloria and her father come clean about their love for each other. Helen had listened at the door and been taken aback.

  Martha’s secret, however, was by far the most shocking: she had been adopted as an infant after her mother was sentenced to death for the murder of at least five children – most of them her own. Crimes that had taken a while to come to light because she had slowly poisoned each of her victims, all the while making out that she was trying to nurse them back to health.

  As Helen put a purring Winston back down and returned to her desk, she mused how such evil could have given birth to a brave and gentle soul like Martha.

  It made her think of her own mother. It still shocked her that Miriam had intercepted Jack’s letters to Helen, making her believe that he no longer cared. If she had known that her father hadn’t forsaken her for his new family, she doubted very much she would have fallen so readily into Theo’s arms and ended up in the hellish predicament in which she had found herself.

  This past year her mother had revealed her true colours – and those colours were far from pretty. She mightn’t be a murderer, but she was most certainly cold, calculating and cruel. A true narcissist.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Saturday 24 October

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ George said as he shook Tommy’s hand.

  He had just arrived on the ward with Polly.

  ‘You too, George. And thank yer for bringing Pol to see me. I hope you’ve not used up the rest of your petrol ration? I hear they’ve completely withdrawn fuel for private users.’

  ‘They have indeed,’ George said. ‘But fortunately my little MG has been granted a special permit on condition she’s available for “work deemed essential”.’

  George chuckled.

  ‘And this is what I would deem “essential”.’

  Tommy smiled. He knew George had been the one to bring Polly to the hospital on the night of the air raid – and that he was a veteran of the First World War, although it was something he never talked about.

  ‘Anyway, I won’t keep you from your lovely lady here.’ George winked at Polly.

  Polly looked radiant. It didn’t matter that she had visited Tommy every day for the past eight days; the thrill of seeing him had clearly not waned in the slightest.

  ‘Now, am I right in thinking Arthur’s accompanying me back into town?’

  ‘He just went to use the facilities,’ Tommy said, looking towards the entrance to the ward. ‘Here he comes.’

  They all looked as Arthur raised a hand and waved but stayed waiting by the matron’s desk.

  ‘Right, cheerio, then,’ George said, turning to leave.

  As he did so, he scanned the rest of the ward, taking in the dozen or so injured soldiers, most of whom looked as though they’d had surgery on at least one of their limbs.

  Nothing changes, he thought bitterly.

  As soon as George had left, Tommy took Polly in his arms and gave her a kiss.

  His actions were accompanied by two loud wolf whistles from Percival and Shorty.

  These, in turn, were met by a thunderous look from the matron, who was monitoring the ward like a headmistress on playground duty.

  ‘Blimey, Pol,’ Tommy said, looking down at the bag he’d only just noticed she had brought with her. ‘No wonder you needed a lift here,’ he ribbed. ‘You’re not thinking of moving in, are you? Not that I’d be complaining, especially as you’d have to bunk down with me.’

  Polly batted his arm playfully. ‘I think Mrs Rosendale might
have something to say about that.’

  She looked at him. He’d had to put his hand on the top of the bed to steady himself.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, helping him to lower himself into the chair by the side. He was clearly still incredibly weak.

  ‘I’ve brought you something,’ Polly said. ‘Something I did after I got that wretched letter from your commander.’

  It still pained Polly to think back to that godforsaken day – and the four long months that had followed.

  ‘Oh yes?’ Tommy’s face had gone serious.

  Polly put her holdall onto the bed.

  ‘Well, one evening, a week or so after I’d learnt you’d been declared missing, I was lying in bed, thinking about the day I’d just had.’ She looked at Tommy and smiled. Sometimes she still had to pinch herself that he was back. That this was real.

  ‘Arthur and I had been down to the docks and we’d been chatting about our favourite subject.’ She laughed. ‘You! And Arthur had been telling me about how your nana Flo could never keep you in because you always wanted to be outdoors. And I was thinking how I’d have normally enjoyed writing to you and ribbing you about causing your grandda and your nana no end of worries, when I suddenly thought to myself, so what if I can’t send him any letters, there’s nothing stopping me writing them.’

  Polly looked at Tommy.

  ‘So, I did. And I vowed that when you came back, I’d give you them and you’d know everything that happened while you were wherever it was you were.’

  Tommy looked down as Polly pulled out a stack of letters from her bag.

  ‘I reckon you must have written one a day?’ He looked at the letters, which had been bound together by string and tied with a neat bow at the top.

  ‘Thereabouts,’ Polly said. She wondered if he’d notice that she’d stopped writing about six weeks ago, on the day his belongings had been sent back from Gibraltar.

  ‘You never gave up hope, did you?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, instead pushing himself out of his chair and putting the batch of letters in his bedside cabinet.

  Polly was relieved. She’d hate for him to know that she had, in fact, given up hope.

  ‘Come on, time for our daily stroll.’ He put his arm out and escorted his fiancée out of the ward.

  ‘You must be very proud of that lad of yours,’ George said as he steered the MG out of the hospital grounds, turning left onto Stockton Road. ‘That’s a bloody dangerous job he’s been doing out there. Brave man. Very brave man.’

  ‘Aye,’ Arthur nodded.

  They were quiet for a moment.

  George drove slowly, enjoying the rarity of taking the ‘old gal’ out, and the fact that there was very little on the road.

  ‘I just hope he’s not got any madcap notion about going back out there,’ Arthur added.

  George looked at the old man and saw concern on his face.

  ‘I presumed he’d been medically discharged,’ George said.

  Arthur sighed.

  ‘I was asking him about it before you and Pol turned up and he said he’d asked them to hold off.’

  George thought the old man might be worrying unnecessarily.

  He doubted Tommy would ever be fit enough to go back to war.

  ‘So, let me make sure I’ve got this right,’ Tommy said, as he wrapped his arms around Polly and kissed her on the nose. They were outside, sitting on one of the benches dotted along the pathway that ran around the hospital grounds.

  ‘George is engaged to Lily. And the two are old friends of Rosie’s. And Bel’s long-lost sister, Maisie, lodges with them in their house in Ashbrooke – along with Kate, Rosie’s old school friend, and another woman called Vivian?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Polly said, purposely not going into any more detail. There was so much Tommy didn’t know. So many things these past two years that she hadn’t been able to tell him in her letters. Rosie and the bordello being one of them.

  ‘And thanks to the Admiralty, they’re now getting married on Christmas Day?’ Tommy continued.

  ‘That’s right,’ Polly said again, this time following her words with a kiss.

  After a few moments, Tommy touched Polly’s face. He never tired of looking at her, being with her, talking with her – kissing her.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘isn’t it time we decided on a date for our wedding?’

  Polly didn’t answer, instead closing her eyes and kissing him again.

  Tommy kissed her back, then held her at arm’s length and laughed.

  ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you were avoiding the question, Mrs soon-to-be Watts.’

  ‘I’m most certainly not avoiding your question,’ Polly defended herself. ‘I was thinking that perhaps we could get married in the New Year.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘Or better still, how about February the fourteenth – Valentine’s Day?’

  Tommy pulled her close.

  ‘But I thought we agreed, when you woke me with a kiss …’ he kissed her neck ‘… that we’d waited long enough. That we’d get married soon.’

  ‘January?’ Polly suggested.

  ‘Soon,’ Tommy repeated.

  Polly laughed loudly. Perhaps a little too loudly.

  ‘Let’s get you out of this place first, eh?’ she said.

  Hurrying into the canteen, Polly thought it seemed an age since she had been there last, when, in fact, it had only been a week.

  The great constant time sometimes seemed terribly fickle.

  ‘Dr Parker,’ Polly called out, overjoyed at seeing the doctor sitting on his own enjoying a cup of tea and an iced bun.

  During visiting times, if he wasn’t in theatre, Dr Parker endeavoured to be in the cafeteria, available to the relatives of what he called his ‘recruits’.

  ‘Ah, Polly, come and sit down. How are you?’

  ‘I’m good. More than good, thank you.’

  Polly pulled up a seat.

  ‘I just wanted a quick word about Tommy, if that’s all right?’

  ‘Of course, fire ahead!’ Dr Parker looked at Polly. Seeing her for the first time without a dirty face and dressed in greasy overalls, he realised just how pretty she was.

  ‘Can you tell me how Tommy’s really doing? He’s very good at making out he’s absolutely hunky-dory, but you just need to look at him to see he’s far from fit and healthy. There seems to be no doubt in his mind that he’s going to completely recover. Back to how he was before he left. Do you think he’s expecting too much?’

  Polly paused.

  ‘I’m asking, not because it matters to me, although it does.’ She shook her head in frustration. ‘I mean, I’ll love him regardless, but I worry how he’ll be in himself if he’s not able to go back to work. It goes without saying he won’t be going back to his unit in Gibraltar, but I know it would be the end of the world if he couldn’t work again.’

  Dr Parker took a moment to decide how best to answer the question. Polly wasn’t just a pretty face; she was astute enough to realise that Tommy needed to recover enough to at least do some kind of work. If not, it would undoubtedly affect his mindset.

  ‘That’s a difficult question.’

  He loosened his tie and took a deep breath.

  ‘With Tommy there’s a lot we don’t know. The shock his body had. Underwater explosions have the potential to damage a person’s internal organs. He’s already had a ruptured spleen, but there may well be other issues that we don’t know about. Add to the mix the fact that his body was given a secondary trauma when he nearly drowned in the Atlantic, and he spent a good part of his epic journey back here semi-conscious and fighting pneumonia.’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘Only time will tell. It really is a case of a day at a time.’

  Polly nodded, digesting what had been said.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Parker. It’s good that I know all this.’

  ‘I have to say, though,’ Dr Parker added, ‘that Tommy is a very resilient man. He came off his pain medicati
on earlier than I would have liked, and he’s up and about, going for walks in the grounds when most men would still be bed-bound.’

  ‘That’s his stubborn streak,’ Polly said. ‘And his obsessive need to be outdoors.’

  Dr Parker murmured his agreement. He’d seen both in Tommy this past week.

  ‘He’s on about setting a date for the wedding,’ Polly added, a little shyly, ‘but I wasn’t sure how long it would be before Tommy was up to it?’

  Dr Parker barked with laughter.

  ‘I think Tommy would drag you down that aisle tomorrow if you’d let him!’

  It wasn’t quite the answer Polly had been expecting.

  Seeing an elderly couple waiting a few yards away, Polly thanked Dr Parker once again and left.

  Dr Parker stood up as Polly took her leave. It had been on the tip of his tongue to mention the night terrors that Tommy was having, but something stopped him.

  They weren’t uncommon in soldiers coming back from war.

  Hopefully, they’d die down the more he adapted to being back home.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Ah, good afternoon, Miss Crawford.’

  Kate had seen Helen looking in the window, so when the bell above the door jangled, her nerves hadn’t followed suit.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you.’ Helen cast a glance back at the window display. ‘Every time I come here, I keep meaning to ask you about that dress. It really is so gorgeous.’

  ‘Ah,’ Kate said, ‘that was one of my first proper commissions. We decided on the pale pink because it was the bride’s second marriage. She’d been widowed but was lucky enough to find love again.’ Kate was always careful never to mention names when talking about other customers. She wanted to be known for her professionalism and discretion as much as for her skills as a seamstress.

  ‘This is just a quick visit,’ Helen said, putting a paper bag on Kate’s workbench and pulling out the red dress she had been wearing the night of the air raid. ‘I’ve had it dry-cleaned but there are still some marks on it, so I thought you could have it. What with all this make-do-and-mending going on.’